The golden sparks came first.
They flickered in the wake of the red streak — tiny, scattered points of light trailing behind Barry like embers blown off a fire — and then, as his speed climbed past every threshold Cisco's instruments had ever recorded, they stopped being sparks and became something else entirely.
Barry Allen, in the last seconds of the tornado's life, became a bolt of lightning wearing a man's shape.
Inside the storm's eye, Clyde pushed. He threw everything he had into the rotation — another air cannon, another wall of force — and none of it mattered anymore. The counter-rotation hit critical mass and the tornado came apart from the inside, its structure collapsing in a shockwave of dust and displaced air that rolled outward across the field and left nothing behind but settling mud and the smell of ozone.
In the lab, Wells took off his glasses. The expression on his face was not entirely scientific.
Barry doubled over at the knees, gasping, and only then noticed that somewhere in the last thirty seconds his mask had been blown off. Behind him, at the edge of the field where the patrol car had been caught in the outer winds, Joe West was staring at the exposed face of Central City's mysterious red-suited superhuman with the particular stillness of a man whose brain had just stopped processing new information.
That superpowered person is my son?!
"I didn't expect," Clyde said, from somewhere behind Barry, "that there'd be someone like me."
Barry turned and straightened.
"There isn't," he said. "I'm nothing like you. You're a criminal."
Clyde looked at him for a long moment. The words landed differently than Barry had probably intended — not as a rebuke, but as a mirror. A criminal who gains power is still a criminal. He couldn't manage basic human decency, so the gap between himself and godhood wasn't a question of ability.
His hand moved to his waistband. Old instinct, the kind that predates superpowers and grand ambitions — the same hand that had shot a detective in this same building nine months ago.
In the end, Clyde Mardon is still Clyde Mardon.
Joe's gun was already out.
And then—
Music.
Vast, sweeping, the kind that comes from a sound system built for something much larger than a car, crashing across the field at full volume through the night air:
"Life — can you please spare me this once—"
Headlights. Two of them, enormous and blinding, swinging into alignment with Clyde's back.
He spun around. The lights hit him full in the face. His trigger finger froze.
"Sometimes I don't know why I have to keep going—"
The semi-trailer was not moving at semi-trailer speeds. It was moving at the speed of something that had decided it had somewhere to be and the laws of physics were a suggestion. The ground shook under it. The vibration arrived before the sound did.
Joe stared. Barry stared. Clyde stared into the headlights like a man who had run out of metaphors.
"Barry, get out of the way!"
"Wipe away your tears and face the mundane, ordinary days—"
Barry moved.
"A spoonful of sauce~"
boom.
In the split-second of flight, Clyde Mardon thought of many things.
The money — still unspent, still in the bags, wherever they'd ended up. Central City, and the version of it he'd planned to preside over. The plane going down in the storm that the accelerator had made. Nine months of running and hiding and then, finally, the moment he'd walked into a bank in broad daylight and known, completely and without any doubt, that he was untouchable.
And then, at the end, his brother.
Mark.
He hadn't thought about Mark in weeks. Months, maybe. But now the face was there, clear as anything — his older brother, always cleaning up after him, always paying for his temper in some currency or another, always the other half of what people meant when they said the Mardon brothers. Two people. Always two.
When did I forget him?
The thought didn't finish.
The truck completed its arc with a kind of unhurried elegance — a smooth turn that carried it past Barry on his left, raising a wall of dust — and then it was gone into the dark.
Barry stood in the settling field and watched the taillights disappear.
He stayed there for several seconds.
In the cab, Jude checked the rearview mirror and addressed the System.
"Confirmed?"
[Transmigration successful. Clyde Mardon has been transported to your home universe. Avatar generated at designated location: Gotham City Prison.]
"Perfect." He settled back. "Gotham gets a new inmate, Central City loses a weather hazard, and I didn't have to fire a single shot." He did a brief mental accounting. "This is what a clean operation looks like."
"I hate this form," Satsuki announced from everywhere around him, because she was the truck. "It's enormous and it makes terrible noises and I used a sound system as a weapon."
"You used a sound system beautifully. And I spent twenty thousand asset points on that form, so we're keeping it." He reached forward and patted the dashboard. "Think of it practically — when I stop running the food cart, at minimum you can haul freight. And there are going to be more metahumans who need relocating. The truck has a future."
A sound somewhere between a mechanical groan and a sigh. Then the world folded.
The semi-trailer contracted, panels collapsing inward, the cab telescoping, components rearranging themselves through a series of precise metallic clicks — and thirty seconds later, a blue-pink-purple motorcycle sat on the edge of the farm road, silent, its headlight off, indistinguishable from the dark.
[You have assisted in advancing this universe's timeline. Barry Allen has neutralized Clyde Mardon. Universe connection increased by 5%.]
"One metahuman criminal and I get five percent," Jude said. "There are going to be a lot of these, aren't there."
[Please note: characters who should be captured in the original timeline cannot die in this universe, and characters who should survive cannot be permanently removed. Review mission parameters carefully before acting.]
"I know." He looked at the dark field. Somewhere in there, Joe West was probably staring at Barry Allen's face and recalibrating his entire worldview. "I'm not trying to optimize for the original timeline. I'm using the present to build a better future. If there's a good ending available, I'll take it over a bad one every time."
He paused, then added, mostly to himself: "That's not a complicated philosophy."
The System did not respond to philosophical statements.
From his earpiece — still open on the S.T.A.R. Labs channel — Wells' voice came through, with the careful tension of a man trying not to sound worried.
"Barry? Barry, are you there? The readings dropped suddenly — and there was some kind of sound on your end—"
A long pause.
"...I'm here." Barry's voice. The particular flatness of someone trying to organize information that doesn't organize cleanly. "It's done. Mardon is — finished."
"Barry, what happened? What was that sound?"
Another pause.
"I don't really know how to explain this." He sounded genuinely troubled by it. "But I think Clyde Mardon may have been hit by a truck."
Silence on the channel.
"A truck."
"A very fast truck. With music." Barry paused. "I don't know where it came from. I don't know where it went. It's not here now."
Jude, in the dark at the road's edge, allowed himself a small smile.
A very fast truck with music.
That'll do.
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